Several factors act as incentives for public and private organizations to build the equipment inventory of their infrastructure network. These may originate due to legislature or are associated with operations relative to maintenance, procurement, traffic, valuation, or safety and emergency response issues.
Geographic information systems (GIS) are used to meet these goals in several fields, including those of transportation, electric distribution, and property assessments. Meanwhile, asset managers are interested in populating their customized GIS applications using either data conversion or data collection techniques. This may require that data captured be converted into a proper GIS format. Although this technique is widely used because it is reasonably economic, it is not as accurate as field data collection.
For field collection, a crew of technicians gather relevant information in the field, using either a Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver combined with data logging devices, or palm computers equipped with GPS receivers. However, proceeding to an infrastructure network inventory by traditional surveying or GPS foot survey methods may prove to be a tedious and costly operation. Furthermore, constraints for some organizations may translate into difficulties maintaining network data up-to-date. This prevents managers from completing efficient planning over time to orient organizational development.